Political Sociology and Social Movements PDF

ANRV381-SO35-19 ARI 2 June 2009 7:44 Political Sociology...

ANRV381-SO35-19 ARI 2 June 2009 7:44 Political Sociology and Social Movements Andrew G. Walder by Stanford University - Main Campus - Green Library on 07/27/09. For personal use only. Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2009.35:393-412. Downloaded from arjournals.annualreviews.org Department of Sociology, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305-2047, email: [email protected] Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2009. 35:393–412 Key Words First published online as a Review in Advance on contentious politics, mobilization, collective action April 6, 2009 The Annual Review of Sociology is online at Abstract soc.annualreviews.org Until the 1970s, the study of social movements was firmly within a di- This article’s doi: verse sociological tradition that explored the relationship between social 10.1146/annurev-soc-070308-120035 structure and political behavior, and was preoccupied with explaining Copyright  c 2009 by Annual Reviews. variation in the political orientation of movements: their ideologies, All rights reserved aims, motivations, or propensities for violence. Subsequently, a break- 0360-0572/09/0811-0393$20.00 away tradition redefined the central problem, radically narrowing the scope of interest to the process of mobilization—how social groups, whoever they are and whatever their aims, marshal resources, recruit adherents, and navigate political environments in order to grow and succeed. Critics would later insist that the construction of meaning, the formation of collective identities, and the stimulation and amplification of emotions play vital and neglected roles in mobilization, but these alternatives did not challenge the narrowed construction of the prob- lem itself. The resulting subfield has largely abandoned the quest to explain variation in the political orientation of movements. Researchers in related fields—on revolution, unions, and ethnic mobilization—have retained an interest in explaining political orientation, although they of- ten view it primarily as a by-product of mobilization. Reviving theories about the impact of social structure on movement political orientation will require integrating insights from research on related but widely scattered subjects. 393  ANRV381-SO35-19 ARI 2 June 2009 7:44 INTRODUCTION THE ARCHEOLOGY From its inception the field of political sociol- OF A RUPTURE ogy was about the relationship between political Today the problem of mobilization is so central phenomena and social structure. Social struc- to the study of contentious politics and social ture meant very different things in the hands movements that few appear able to conceive of of different theorists, and this served to define a different question or ask why the field took theoretical camps: economic organization, class the shape it did. Before the rise of current ap- and status, community organization and social proaches, research on political movements was ties, formal organization and bureaucracy, or driven by three broad traditions, all of which small-group interaction. In their consideration were deeply curious about the relationship be- of social movements, political sociologists were tween social structure and politics. The oldest preoccupied with explaining their orientations tradition was class analysis, ultimately Marxist by Stanford University - Main Campus - Green Library on 07/27/09. For personal use only. by reference to the experiences of the subpopu- in origin, and was committed to understand- Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2009.35:393-412. Downloaded from arjournals.annualreviews.org lations from which movements drew members. ing the roots of radical politics in class conflicts The core intellectual puzzles were why politi- inherent in different modes of production. A cal movements were reformist or revolutionary, second tradition was based on the variety of secular or religious, pragmatic or ideological, role theory exemplified by Robert Merton and nationalist or communist, peaceful or violent. others, which usually took the form of explana- These were the central questions that motivated tions based on role strain, status inconsistency, research on the subject through the 1970s. The and relative deprivation. A third tradition, ul- process of mobilization, if acknowledged at all, timately Durkheimian in origin, was rooted in was usually an afterthought. the structural-functionalism of Talcott Parsons This changed more than three decades ago and his students. when the core problem was restated: Given cer- An early exemplar of class analysis is tain motives (or grievances) in a subpopula- Seymour Martin Lipset’s first book, Agrarian tion, under what conditions and through what Socialism (1950), which sought to explain the processes are these motives translated into ef- anomalous rise of a rural political movement fective group action? This was an important with ostensibly socialist aims in the Canadian and neglected problem in influential theories wheat belt. The analysis looked closely at that traced movements variously to frustra- the characteristics of wheat agriculture on the tions born of relative deprivation, class conflict North American prairie, the close-knit nature anchored in modes of production, or socially of rural communities, and the inherent con- and psychologically marginalized subpopula- flict between producers and middlemen in com- tions. The new agenda began with a focus on mercialized smallholding agriculture. Lipset a subpopulation’s organizational capacity and wanted to understand why radical politics was the resources it could command. It later ex- so rare in North America by studying this de- panded to incorporate macropolitical circum- viant case, and he closely analyzed the reasons stances, or political opportunity structures, and why this radical, seemingly anticapitalist move- then to claims about the perceptions of partic- ment moderated its ideology and policies once ipants and the framing of appeals, the sources it achieved regional political power and nation- of collective identities, or the amplification of alized key commercial sectors. participants’ emotions. The increasing variety A later exemplar in this tradition is Jef- of ideas about mobilization and the perennial fery Paige’s Agrarian Revolution (1975), which controversies within the subfield has created was ultimately motivated to explain the origins a false sense of intellectual breadth, obscur- of the tenacious revolutionary movement in ing the enduring narrowness of the focus on Vietnam that so preoccupied American politics mobilization. at that time. Building on Stinchcombe’s (1961) 394 Walder  ANRV381-SO35-19 ARI 2 June 2009 7:44 typology of rural enterprise, Paige offered an temperance movement as a form of status pol- elegant theory that linked variations in the ide- itics, and Lipset’s (1959a,b, 1960) later essays ologies and aims of rural political movements— on right-wing extremism and working-class whether they were reformist or radical, so- authoritarianism. cialist or nationalist—to the varied features of The core idea of the Parsonian tradition was agricultural enterprise in regions that exported the familiar Durkheimian notion that a well- products on world markets. Both Lipset and integrated and stable society is ultimately based Paige had something to say about the organi- on a moral order in which normative expec- zational capacity of the groups involved, but tations, based on widely held values, are in a their primary interest was in explaining not state of equilibrium with the existing division of how these groups mobilized, but why these labor. As societies grow and change, social movements adopted varied aims and ideologies. structures become more differentiated and by Stanford University - Main Campus - Green Library on 07/27/09. For personal use only. Other examples of work in this tradition include specialized, necessitating adaptive changes in Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2009.35:393-412. Downloaded from arjournals.annualreviews.org Calhoun (1982), McNall (1988), Schwartz norms and laws that regulate the inevitable con- (1976), and Scott (1976), all of which traced flict that change brings. Rapidly changing so- degrees of political radicalism to features of eco- cieties are singularly prone to disruption, and nomic organization and communities in histor- the individuals who are most affected by rapid ical context. change experience forms of social and psy- Davies (1962) and Gurr (1970) exemplified chological strain that make them more likely the relative deprivation tradition. The core idea to join radical movements, whether secular or is that it is not overall levels of hardship that religious. One emblematic contribution to this drive groups to engage in rebellion, but their tradition was Smelser’s (1959) study of working- deprivation relative to socially conditioned ex- class radicalism in the English industrial revo- pectations. Although rarely explicit, this tradi- lution, which attributed it (contra Marx) to the tion was ultimately rooted in conceptions de- disruption of working-class families. His later rived from role theory, which viewed social theory of collective behavior (Smelser 1962) structures as constellations of overlapping, so- traced qualitative variations in the aims and ide- cially constructed roles with assigned statuses, ologies of social movements to the extent to normative expectations, and varying degrees of which a society’s moral order was disrupted by socially structured role strain (Merton 1968a,b). change. The idea spread widely in the form of One version of the theory is that individuals modernization theory into the field of compar- who experience status inconsistency or frus- ative politics, where it became central to expla- trated upward mobility are the most likely to nations of revolution in developing countries become radicalized. Another version is that (Huntington 1968, Johnson 1966). those groups who experience a decline in sta- These traditions shared three essential fea- tus relative to others—either because of an- tures. First, they all sought to relate variations other group’s rise or their own decline—are in features of social structure to the character the most likely to become radicalized. The key of social movements. Second, they all were ulti- mechanism in these theories is psychological mately interested in explaining variations in po- frustration, which breeds aggression and makes litical orientations—why movements are liberal individuals likely recruits for extremist move- or radical, reformist or revolutionary, peace- ments. For both Davies and Gurr, protest and ful or violent—not the capacity of groups to radical politics were conceived as political vi- mobilize. Third, they all offered fairly specific olence, in contrast to more quiescent forms predictions about the structural circumstances of routine politics. Other prominent examples under which different forms of politics would are Kornhauser’s (1959) analysis of mass so- emerge. ciety as the foundation of totalitarian move- These traditions differed in equally fun- ments, Gusfield’s (1955, 1963) analysis of the damental ways. Their conceptions of social www.annualreviews.org Political Sociology and Social Movements 395  ANRV381-SO35-19 ARI 2 June 2009 7:44 structure were very different, as were the mech- ultimate determinants of the strength and suc- anisms thought to link social position to po- cess of radical movements. litical behavior. Class analysis and subsequent Theories of relative deprivation and analyses of economic enterprise and commu- Parsonian theories of collective behavior nity structure offered a concrete conception of suffered from a similar problem. The evi- social structure in which a rational awareness dence adduced to confirm them was often of economic and political interest—sometimes impressionistic, yet the clarity with which they reinforced by moral ideas embedded in com- were stated invited quantitative tests of their munity traditions—played a central role. Rel- predictions. Efforts by skeptics to test their ative deprivation and collective behavior theo- underlying propositions often failed to confirm ries offered more abstract conceptions of social their predictions (e.g., Paige 1971). structure indicated by aggregate social trends in The most ambitious early study to under- by Stanford University - Main Campus - Green Library on 07/27/09. For personal use only. which social marginality, psychological disori- mine the reigning theories was Tilly’s (1964) Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2009.35:393-412. Downloaded from arjournals.annualreviews.org entation, and frustration played a central role, dogged empirical pursuit of the social origins but they shared a common goal of relating fea- of the Vendée counterrevolution in western tures of social contexts to the qualitative char- France in the 1790s. To test explanations de- acter of political movements. rived from two competing sociological tradi- Whereas all three of these traditions have tions, Tilly looked intensively at the transfor- been largely relegated to the prehistory of re- mation of western France’s social structure on search on social movements and contentious the eve of the revolution. Class analysis, rep- politics, they all spawned theories that had the resented by the French historians who inter- now-rare virtue of yielding reasonably clear em- preted their revolution in classic Marxist terms, pirical implications. The observation that each portrayed the counterrevolution as the reaction of these traditions repeatedly failed to predict of social classes rooted in precapitalist modes of the outbreak of the kinds of movements they production: nobility and peasants in noncom- were designed to explain contributed heavily to mercialized agriculture. Modernization theory, their eclipse. in contrast, predicted that the counterrevolu- Class analysis, especially in its original tion would have occurred in those communities Marxist form, had long been dogged by its most disrupted by the penetration of capitalist overprediction of radical working-class move- economic relations. ments and the remarkable rarity of the revolu- Tilly found that neither theory fit the evi- tions in the circumstances that Marx and the dence he collected from archival sources about early Marxists had expected. This had already the region’s economic development and com- bred forms of neo-Marxism that emphasized munity organization. The counterrevolution the functions of the capitalist state (Miliband did not emerge in the regions most transformed 1969), the production of consciousness in the by capitalism, as predicted by modernization labor process (Burawoy 1979, 1984), or the ex- theory, nor did it originate in the regions least tension of elite ideological hegemony over sub- transformed, as predicted by Marxist class anal- ordinate classes (Thompson 1966). The history ysis. More importantly, the groups that led the of radical movements also made many observers insurgency and participated most actively in it keenly aware of the role of organized repres- were not those that either theory would predict. sion and violence employed by the forces of or- There was, in fact, no consistent group pattern der. The reputation of such figures as Lenin, to the conflict at all: Each of the major social Trotsky, and Mao as innovative strategists who groups in the region, including the merchants could turn unfavorable circumstances into rev- and urban bourgeoisie who were thought to olutionary situations suggested that the anal- be most favorable to the bourgeois French ysis of organization, strategy, and the balance revolution, were divided against one another of forces in political environments were the and found themselves on both sides of a new 396 Walder  ANRV381-SO35-19 ARI 2 June 2009 7:44 political cleavage. The driving wedge was the flict from the perspective of those in subordi- requirement that the Catholic clergy take a loy- nate positions. He drew on long-standing po- alty oath to the new revolutionary government litical science traditions in the analysis of in- and repudiate papal authority. The local clergy fluence, interest groups, and political parties were split by this demand, and those who re- (Easton 1953, Key 1952, Lipsky 1968, Tru- fused were driven into opposition, taking many man 1951) and on sociological conflict theory of their parishioners with them—splitting the and elite theory (Dahrendorf 1959, Mills 1956) social structure along what Tilly called “verti- to argue a different proposition: “Discontent cal lines” that did not obey the logic of either is viewed as an opportunity or a danger for class analysis or modernization theory. particular subgroups, not as a problem of so- This research convinced Tilly that it was cial control. It is important because of its con- ultimately more short-term processes of mo- sequences for mobilization of political influ- by Stanford University - Main Campus - Green Library on 07/27/09. For personal use only. bilization that shaped the formation of politi- ence” (Gamson 1968, p. 10). Gamson (1975) Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2009.35:393-412. Downloaded from arjournals.annualreviews.org cal movements. In subsequent empirical work, followed with an empirical study of Ameri- which pioneered the application of quantita- can protest groups that focused on their strate- tive techniques to historical data on collective gies and organizational forms, relating them to action, he and several collaborators tested their levels of success. One important depar- propositions derived from relative deprivation ture was his treatment of unruliness (includ- theory and collective behavior-modernization ing violence) as a strategy designed to further theory, finding that these theories failed to pre- a group’s goals, not as an emotional reaction to dict rates of collective violence or collective frustration. protest, and that rates of collective protest failed Tilly (1978) later contributed to this emerg- to covary with other measures of social disrup- ing resource mobilization perspective by defin- tion (Lodhi & Tilly 1973, Snyder & Tilly 1972, ing a new focus on how discontented groups Tilly 1973). Other work (Shorter & Tilly 1974) mobilized for political action. Tilly introduced examined the evolution of the size, duration, ideas about repression and facilitation by the and frequency of strikes in France that showed state and other powerful actors that were them to be highly influenced by the scale of extended further by McAdam (1982) in his economic enterprise, the rates of unionization, study of the American civil rights movement. and the timing of national political events. All McAdam placed even greater emphasis on the of these pointed to a more political focus on broader political environment within which in- the organizations and processes that influence surgent groups mobilized, and labeled his ap- group mobilization. proach the political process perspective. An- other important contribution that paralleled McAdam’s was Skocpol’s (1979) state-centered MOBILIZATION STUDIES analysis of revolution, which shifted atten- Others who were dissatisfied with the portrayal tion even more into the political environment. of political protest as an expression of emotional Skocpol argued that mass mobilizing revolu- frustration and violent impulses had already of- tionary movements achieve their aims only fered a different view. For them, protest was a when they occur in conjunction with a state political activity that was as rational and goal- that has alienated the ruling class and that directed as routine politics. Gamson (1968) is pressured to the point of crisis by the in- characterized the relative deprivation and col- ternational system. These works were all de- lective behavior traditions as one-sidedly con- cisive departures from earlier traditions and cerned with problems of social control from defined a new field that focused on the mobiliza- the perspective of authorities, and neglectful tion of groups—their ability to organize, recruit of problems of authority, influence, and con- adherents, deploy strategy, gain strength, and www.annualreviews.org Political Sociology and Social Movements 397  ANRV381-SO35-19 ARI 2 June 2009 7:44 achieve their aims—within the limits of existing politics, something that defined the sociolog- political opportunities.1 ical tradition. Social structure, if invoked, was One concise and influential early statement important only to the extent that it promoted of this perspective was by McCarthy & Zald or impeded the capacity of groups to mobi- (1977), who articulated what they called the new lize. Questions about the political character of “extreme” assumption, quoting Turner & Kil- group aims were implicitly set aside as a sep- lian (1972, p. 251): “There is always enough dis- arate matter—preconditions (viewed narrowly content in any society to supply the grass-roots as unspecified grievances) that provided the support for a movement if the movement is ef- raw material for mobilization, but were outside fectively organized and has at its disposal the the scope of the theoretical problem. Analyti- power and resources of some established elite cally speaking, the action was in the process of group.” They added, “For some purposes we mobilization, not in the formation of political by Stanford University - Main Campus - Green Library on 07/27/09. For personal use only. go even further: grievances and discontent may orientations. The leading exponents of this per- Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2009.35:393-412. Downloaded from arjournals.annualreviews.org be defined, created, and manipulated by issue spective excelled at describing the changes in entrepreneurs and associations.” McCarthy & social structure and political institutions that Zald emphasized that this was a partial theory; were the backdrop for major episodes of po- it ignored the social conditions that generated litical contention (McAdam 1982; Tilly 1986, political motivations. 1995). These accounts, however, simply pro- These contributions initiated a pronounced vided a historical backdrop for the main event: paradigm shift in political sociology in which an analysis of the means through which groups the study of social movements and contentious mobilized and movements grew. The theory politics diverged from the field’s foundations focused on processes of mobilization, not the into the subfield that exists today ( Jenkins formation of political orientations. The puz- 1983). In a way that very few appear to have rec- zle was not why a mobilized group adopted ognized, the emerging resource mobilization the political orientation it did—that, presum- tradition did not simply offer a different per- ably, was given by historical circumstances— spective on social movements; it changed the but how it was able successfully to mobilize and question that was being asked, radically nar- emerge. We have ended up with a subfield that rowing the intellectual horizons of the field. aims to explain the conditions under which a The puzzle that had long preoccupied politi- movement—of any type—can grow and suc- cal sociology rapidly receded from view—how ceed, but we no longer have explanations to to explain the political orientation of mobi- offer about variation in the substantive con- lized groups and the aims and contents of tent of a movement—the type of politics that it movements. represents. Along with the decline of interest in this The shift in the definition of the problem question was a parallel decline in curiosity about was heavily influenced by other disciplines— the relationship between social structure and borrowings from political science and reactions to challenges from economics. The unacknowl- edged intellectual foundation of the resource 1 Skocpol was inspired by Moore (1966), and her work mobilization perspective is the American po- was generally received as a contribution to his variety of comparative-historical scholarship. Note, however, that litical science tradition of interest group theory Moore’s puzzle was rooted in the earlier tradition of po- that viewed politics as a continual contest for in- litical sociology. He deployed class analysis to explain the fluence by groups with different levels of power. substantive character of national politics: democracy, fas- cism, and communism. He was not interested in explain- This tradition offered a more palatable view of ing levels of mobilization or the success or failure of move- political conflict and protest as part of the nor- ments, but their political orientations. In this sense, Paige’s mal influence processes of a pluralistic society. (1997) analysis of the different political trajectories of Central American regimes is more firmly within Moore’s tradition of However, unlike the sociological tradition, it macrosociology. had never shown interest in the formation of 398 Walder  ANRV381-SO35-19 ARI 2 June 2009 7:44 political orientations or why they might vary. In a prolonged effort to establish a sociological the distinctive American political science tradi- alternative to the more parsimonious theo- tion that traced its ancestry to Arthur Bentley’s ries of economics. The increasing insistence (1908) treatise on politics as a constant struggle on the subjective dimensions of mobilization— by interest groups, the emphasis was on how collective action frames, the formation of col- groups pursued their interests and used exist- lective identities, the role of emotions—is es- ing political opportunities to achieve their aims sentially motivated by a feeling that the ini- (Easton 1953, Key 1952, Truman 1951). The tial emphases on organization, networks, and existence of groups with conflicting interests political opportunity structures were not suffi- was assumed as a given starting point of these ciently different from rational choice models to theories; the central problematic was how polit- offer a fully sociological alternative (Goodwin ical institutions channeled the clash of interests & Jasper 1999, 2004; Klandermans 1984, 1992; by Stanford University - Main Campus - Green Library on 07/27/09. For personal use only. to produce political outcomes. This focus on Mueller 1992; Ferree 1992). Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2009.35:393-412. Downloaded from arjournals.annualreviews.org political process and lack of curiosity about the Another shaping influence was methodolog- formation of political orientations is the endur- ical: The outcomes of mobilization are observ- ing and largely unrecognized contribution of able and readily quantifiable. Counts of events, American political science to the resource mo- rates of protest, the formation and membership bilization and political process perspectives in of unions, political parties, movement newspa- sociology. pers, and the scale of protests were all readily This tendency was strongly reinforced by measurable and analyzable with increasingly so- the field of economics: Olson’s (1965) power- phisticated multivariate techniques. The shift ful critique of the group political theories that of attention to mobilization coincided with the inspired resource mobilization theory. From a rise of systematic quantitative research in po- rational choice perspective, Olson revealed a litical sociology. Those who were interested serious logical flaw in group theory—the con- in testing theoretical propositions and demon- flation of individual with group interest. He strating the utility of their theories of mobiliza- pointed out that logically it would not be in tion had strong incentives to focus on this set individuals’ interests to contribute to collective of outcomes. action if they could benefit from group gains For more than two decades debates in this without personally bearing the costs of collec- subfield have been about the role of organiza- tive action. For Olson, this free rider problem tion, political opportunity, resources, strategy, was at the core of the puzzle of collective action. collective identity, cognitive frames, and emo- Therefore the central challenge of any theory tions, all of them defined as complementary or of collective action was to specify the selective competing approaches to understanding group incentives for individuals to contribute to group mobilization. Since the mid-1990s one of the goals. primary intellectual activities in the field has Olson’s solutions to the collective action been to negotiate competing claims and for- problem—and those of the intellectual tradi- mulate integrative syntheses among the differ- tions in economics and political science that his ent perspectives (Aminzade & McAdam 2001, ideas spawned—were limited primarily to the Gamson & Meyer 1996, Goodwin & Jasper rational calculation of individual benefits and 2004, Goodwin et al. 2001, McAdam 1996, costs. This was viewed as a direct challenge to Meyer & Minkoff 2004, Meyer et al. 2002, the discipline of sociology, and resource mobi- Polletta & Jasper 2001). The extraordinary va- lization theorists responded with a wide range riety of answers to questions about recruitment of alternative solutions to the collective action and commitment to social movements and to problem (another term for the problem of mo- their broader societal reception gives the ap- bilization). In many ways the field of social pearance of intellectual breadth and vitality. movements and contentious politics has been All of this breadth and vitality, however, has www.annualreviews.org Political Sociology and Social Movements 399  ANRV381-SO35-19 ARI 2 June 2009 7:44 remained within the narrowed boundaries of to exhausting the range of potentially useful the defining question—how groups mobilize, ones. Social structure can be conceived con- or why social movements emerge. cretely or abstractly, as an empirical descrip- tion of a historically situated setting, or as an aggregate measure of some dimension of social ALTERNATIVE DIRECTIONS life. It can be conceived in terms of categories While the puzzle of political orientation has such as status, class, gender, or occupation, or largely dropped out of theoretical discourse as relationships such as kinship, authority, social in the subfield of social movements, it is still networks, community, or small-group interac- pursued by students of political sociology in tion. It can be considered at the macro level of related fields: ethnicity and nationalism, revolu- national polities, at the meso level of organiza- tion, and labor unions, and in a range of histor- tions or communities, or at the micro level of by Stanford University - Main Campus - Green Library on 07/27/09. For personal use only. ical and comparative case studies. For obvious small groups. There are few prior constraints on Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2009.35:393-412. Downloaded from arjournals.annualreviews.org reasons it is a central concern in the recently those who want to understand the social sources revived interest in political violence and terror- of political orientation. ism. Although these studies often address sub- Moreover, social structures need not be con- jects that can be conceived of as social move- ceived as static. Most of the early studies of ments, they have been largely ignored in that political movements were premised on grad- subfield because they address a question that is ual or abrupt changes in social structure. The no longer part of its central focus. As we shall collective behavior tradition identified individ- see, however, the emphasis on mobilization has uals who were most affected by disruptive social influenced many of these studies as well, and change as likely recruits for protest movements, political orientation is often treated as a by- but the idea was not limited to them. Ar- product of successful group mobilization. guments about the moral economy of tradi- Mobilization is a centrally important pro- tional communities—for example, peasant vil- cess in movement emergence and growth, but lages in subsistence economies (Scott 1976) or this is not the same thing as explaining why a craft organization in early industrial economies movement adopts a certain kind of political ori- (Calhoun 1982)—traced the origins of radi- entation. To take an extreme example, suicide cal movements to the decline of communities bombing may be a tactic suited to certain kinds and the violation of their moral codes. These of political opportunity structures, but this begs studies balanced a concern to explain political the question of how populations of potential orientation (anticapitalist radicalism) and orga- suicide bombers are formed and how, once re- nizational capacity (densely networked commu- cruited, they are molded into agents of destruc- nity ties). They also balanced recognition of the tion. Is there a systematic relationship between ways that compelling economic interests inter- the political orientation of movements and the acted with, and were reinforced by, outrage at characteristics of their adherents, their social the violation of culturally rooted moral codes— experiences prior to joining a movement, or a defense of tradition that ironically was trans- their experiences afterwards as members of a muted into anticapitalist radicalism. social movement organization? To examine possible links between social These questions inevitably lead us back to structure and politics does not mean that one a sustained examination of the relationship be- will find them. One of the primary reasons tween social structure and politics, by reviving for examining social structural sources of po- the field’s former curiosity about the social lives litical orientations is to uncover circumstances of movement participants and nonparticipants where the expected relationships fail to appear. alike. The range of possible conceptions of so- Cases in which the posited social structures cial structure is very broad. The older genera- fail to explain are just as useful as the reverse, tion of structural analyses did not come close and provide new intellectual puzzles. The only 400 Walder  ANRV381-SO35-19 ARI 2 June 2009 7:44 convincing way to develop alternatives to struc- explanations failed to accurately identify the in- tural explanations is to show how they can ac- terests and identities of the participants. Tilly’s count for outcomes where a structural explana- analysis of the Vendée counterrevolution— tion falters. discussed above—is an outstanding early exam- Several studies have already addressed these ple. He described a process in which Catholic issues, although they fit uneasily with the dom- clergy were forced to renounce loyalty to the inant focus on mobilization. Perhaps the most pope or lose their parishes, a demand that split familiar is Gould’s research on social networks the priests and in turn divided all the major and political mobilization. Networks in social social groups in the community (Tilly 1964, movement research are primarily understood pp. 227–304). This was a short-term process of as mechanisms of micromobilization through identity formation touched off by rapid changes which individuals are recruited into movement in political institutions—and deep splits in the by Stanford University - Main Campus - Green Library on 07/27/09. For personal use only. organizations or episodes of collective action community that were not predicted by the pre- Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2009.35:393-412. Downloaded from arjournals.annualreviews.org (McAdam 1986, McAdam & Paulsen 1993). existing social structure or by its long-term Gould’s work focuses on mobilization, but his changes as capitalism advanced. Tilly’s findings careful reconstruction of the role of networks had profound implications for theories about in the revolutionary insurgencies of nineteenth the relationship between social structure and century Paris and the 1794 Whiskey Rebellion politics—implications, we have already seen, in western Pennsylvania were not motivated to that he did not subsequently pursue. explain how insurgents mobilized. Gould’s ac- Remarkably similar processes are described tual problem—similar to Tilly’s in The Vendée in Walder’s (2006, 2009) analysis of the for- (1964)—was to accurately identify the interests mation of student Red Guard factions during and collective identities of the participants by China’s Cultural Revolution of 1966–1968. He delineating the social networks through which found that none of the interest group or net- they mobilized. His core finding, which contra- work explanations long employed to account dicted the assumptions of generations of histor- for Red Guard factionalism withstood close ex- ical scholarship, was that the revolutionary mo- amination, and found instead a pattern in which bilization behind the Paris Commune of 1871 university political networks were split and their was based on neighborhood networks and com- occupants turned against one another by forced munity solidarities, not the working-class iden- choices similar to those in revolutionary France tities that had defined insurgent mobilization in described by Tilly. 1848. Gould’s conclusions were as much about Another example is Traugott’s (1980, 1985) the identities and motives of the participants analysis of the class origins of the Parisian as they were about their capacity to mobilize working-class insurgents of 1848 and of the (Gould 1991, 1993, 1995). Similarly, his net- militia that suppressed them. Contrary to work analysis of the Whiskey Rebellion was Marx’s analysis of these events and subsequent motivated to understand its actual social basis, Marxist historiography, Traugott found that the which he identified as a cross-class insurgency actors on both sides of the barricades came from led by local elites who were cut out of fed- virtually identical working-class backgrounds, eral patronage networks that were expanding and both initially had revolutionary orienta- westward beyond the Appalachian Mountains tions. The political orientations of the two sides (Gould 1996). Gould’s aim in both these stud- diverged over a year during which they partici- ies was to show how the interests and identities pated in differently organized militias, only one of participants in revolutionary mobilizations of which was able to build cohesion and solidar- were defined by evolving social networks. ity among its members. Similarly, Markoff and A second set of examples looked closely at Shapiro have shown empirically that levels of the social foundations of well-known political conflict in the aims of different social classes movements and found that prevailing structural varied by context in revolutionary France, and www.annualreviews.org Political Sociology and Social Movements 401  ANRV381-SO35-19 ARI 2 June 2009 7:44 that outcomes were the process of repeated example is Kimeldorf’s (1989) comparison of political interactions through time that fully longshoremen’s unions on the East and West represented the original aims of none of the par- coasts of the United States. In the West they ticipants (Markoff 1985, 1988, 1997; Markoff & were dominated by communists, whereas in the Shapiro 1985; Shapiro & Markoff 1998). The New York region they were dominated by labor common thread in these studies is a curios- rackets and organized crime. Kimeldorf ’s expla- ity about the relationship between social struc- nation was a rare melding of social structural ture and politics and unexpected findings that and political process explanations. It included pointed the authors to short-term processes both a careful analysis of the varied structure that altered the political orientations and out- and organization of the industries on the two comes that were otherwise presumed to come coasts and differences in the origins and compo- from social structure. sition of their labor forces and of the varied po- by Stanford University - Main Campus - Green Library on 07/27/09. For personal use only. A third group of examples are from stud- litical opportunity structures of New York and Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2009.35:393-412. Downloaded from arjournals.annualreviews.org ies of ethnic mobilization, a field that has led San Francisco at the time the unions formed. a largely separate existence from social move- Finally, some have sought to explain polit- ment research, overlapping with it only occa- ical orientation by reference to the structure sionally. A central problem in this field is to ex- of the national polity—but not through the fa- plain why ethnic identity becomes salient as a miliar concept of political opportunity struc- cause of conflict—instead of class, occupation, ture. Swanson (1960) argued that the domi- or some other collective identity. This makes it nant religious ideas in a society varied with difficult to limit the question narrowly to that of the extent to which it had a unitary authority mobilization or to ignore the social structural structure. He applied this classification scheme sources of identity and conflict. One strand of (Swanson 1971) to the outcomes of the rebel- theory explains ethnic antagonism as a prod- lions that accompanied the Protestant Refor- uct of competition in labor markets (Bonacich mation in Europe, and claimed a close cor- 1972, 1976; Olzak 1992). Another attributes respondence between prior regime type and persistent ethnic identity to a cultural division Protestant versus Catholic outcomes (Swanson of labor in which immigrant, language, or reli- 1967). Subsequent authors tried to identify the- gious groups are concentrated in occupational oretical mechanisms behind some of these asso- niches (Hechter 1974, 1975, 1978). Research ciations (Paige 1974) or challenged Swanson’s in this area tests the implications of competing findings (Wuthnow 1985). Bergesen (1977) ap- theories in explaining ethnic political mobiliza- plied these ideas to the explanation of politi- tion (Bélanger & Pinard 1991, Medrano 1994, cal witch hunts. In a different vein, Hechter Okamoto 2003). It is more common in this sub- drew a distinction between indirect and di- field to balance a concern with identity forma- rect rule by the center of a national polity to tion with that of group mobilization. Olzak, explain the paradoxical eruption of nationalist for example, has examined competing theories movements in modern nation-states. Nation- about the labor market and other social origins alist movements emerge as a reaction to cen- of ethnic antagonism, and she has examined the tral government attempts to shift from indirect problem of mobilization as conceived in social to direct rule over ethnically distinct regions movements research (Olzak 1989, 1992; Olzak (Hechter 2000). Similarly, the shift from class & Shanahan 1994). politics to cultural politics in capitalist democ- A fourth example is studies of labor unions— racies is a reaction to the intrusion of welfare a field that has often sought to explain levels state legislation and direct administration into of labor militancy or the prevalence of radical areas of social life formerly left to families and or reformist ideologies in trade unions (Conell local communities (Hechter 2004). & Voss 1990, Stepan-Norris & Zeitlin 1989, All of these studies explore the social struc- Voss & Sherman 2000). Perhaps the clearest tural sources of political orientations, and all 402 Walder  ANRV381-SO35-19 ARI 2 June 2009 7:44 of them consider phenomena that can readily toward civil rights for African Americans. How- be translated into generic questions about ever, the overall impact of these circumstances social movements. Their lessons have been can be conceived as a kind of environmental se- largely lost on theories about social movements lection that shaped the orientations of a move- because these theories have been concerned ment by permitting some kinds of movement with a separate question—mobilization. There organizations to grow and suppressing others. nonetheless exists a foundation for a more sys- Similar observations have been offered tematic effort to understand the social roots about repressive and violent regimes and oth- of movement political orientations, should this erwise treacherous political environments. In once again become a major intellectual concern. such circumstances secretive movements that work underground and exercise strong inter-